Astronomy Colloquium

In the last five years we have made remarkable progress in turning superconducting lumped element microwave resonators into the most powerful UV, optical, and near-IR detectors in the world.  In this talk I will describe in detail the operating principles of these detectors, called Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors, and describe some of the exciting astronomy that we have done with them.  I will finish by discussing future possibilities of the technology, including the real possibility that these detectors will be the first ones to detect life on nearby planets.